Top 10 Sensor Trends to Watch

Hand-gesture sensors
Hand-gesture sensors have also gained traction recently by using infrared. An infrared proximity sensor can be an ultrasonic sensor or just a camera. “These are coming on smartphones, tablets, and laptops as well, but the big market is the smartphone. Today, it’s mostly the Galaxy S4,“ Bouchaud said.

iFixit finds the "multi-purpose component that connects the earpiece speaker, IR blaster, and a sensor array hosting the ambient light sensor and a second IR sensor." Click here for larger image.(Source: iFixit)

A look at the IR sensors in Samsung Galaxy S4 phone from iFixit's teardown: "The placement of the two IR sensors on either side of the earpiece speaker explains how Samsung's new Air View/Air Gesture feature operates. By comparing IR light reflected from your hand into each of the sensors, the phone can track sideways motion as you gesture without touching the screen."(Source: Fixit)

Curran said with regard to overall enhancements in the user interface, as well as in the fidelity of translating human gestures into digital commands, Accenture has been really impressed with what it has seen in the industry. “People are looking to enhance the natural user interface to make them easier and more seamless for the mainstream consumer,” he said.

MYO gesture control armband
Canadian startup Thalmic Labs has developed MYO, a Bluetooth 4.0 device with a biosensor that can pick up small electrical impulses in our arm muscles. Any wrist movement, finger twitch or fist clenching is recorded by the inner side of the MYO, as it gets skin contact. There's also an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a magnetometer -- all on a single device. The idea for the device derives from a navigation aid for the blind.

In working on this slideshow, I was amazed how the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone, for this one brief moment, is really influential and a good example of these trends: it has humidity and temperature sensors, IR sensors for gesture recognition, ambient light sensors, the usual sensors that make the camera work, pressure (barometer), accelerometers -- all i need is my fuel cell sensor so the phone can be its own breathalyzer. If you get a chance, take a look at iFixit's teardown photos here. It's a pretty amazing piece of engineering.